Chapter 30 Mehar
MEHAR
I didn’t text him back.
Janelle’s words had burrowed into my brain like termites and they were eating through every good feeling I’d had over the past few weeks.
Trauma survivors often mistake intensity for intimacy.
I’d driven home replaying every moment with Quest through that lens and by the time I parked, I’d convinced myself that everything between us was a chemical reaction, not a real connection.
My nervous system seeking regulation. My body grabbing onto safety because it was starving.
He wasn’t special. He was just the first man who wasn’t hurting me and my broken brain couldn’t tell the difference.
That’s what I told myself as I climbed the three flights of stairs to my apartment.
That’s what I told myself as I unlocked the door.
That’s what I was still telling myself when I walked into my living room and found Quest Banks sitting on my navy blue leather sofa with his legs crossed and his arm stretched across the back like he paid rent here.
I froze. My hand went to my purse where my gun was.
“How did you get in my apartment?”
“Your lock is trash, Mehar.” He said it casually, like he was commenting on the weather. “I picked it in about thirty-five seconds. Which is exactly my point.”
“Your POINT? You broke into my apartment to make a point?”
“I came to check on you because you didn’t respond to my text, which is not like you.
And when I got here, I realized a twelve-year-old with a bobby pin could get through your front door.
Your windows don’t have sensors. Your building has no cameras in the stairwell.
And your elevator has been broken for weeks, which means the only way up is an unmonitored staircase that anybody can access from the street.
” He looked at me with that expression that was half concern and half CEO assessing a security risk. “You need to move.”
“I’m not moving.”
“I’ll get you a condo. Something with a doorman, a key fob system, cameras on every floor. Somewhere safe.”
“I don’t need you to buy me a condo. I don’t need you to buy me anything. And I definitely don’t need you breaking into my home to tell me my home isn’t good enough. Do you understand how insane this is? You picked my lock, Quest. You’re sitting on my couch uninvited.”
“You didn’t answer my text.”
“Because I was busy!”
“Busy doing what?”
“That’s none of your business! I don’t owe you a response every time you reach out. We are not in a relationship. You don’t own me. You don’t get to show up at my apartment because I didn’t text you back fast enough.”
I was yelling now. Standing in the middle of my living room with my purse still on my shoulder and my keys still in my hand, yelling at a man who was sitting on my sofa looking at me like my anger was entertainment.
“You done?” he asked.
“No, I’m not done! This is exactly what my therapist was talking about. She said—” I stopped myself. I wasn’t about to repeat Janelle’s words to him. That was between me and my therapy.
“She said what?”
“Nothing.”
“Your therapist said something about me and now you’re not answering texts and you’re standing there looking at me like I’m the enemy. What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything about you specifically. She just said that I might not be ready to—” I waved my hand vaguely because I couldn’t finish that sentence without sounding like I was breaking up with someone I wasn’t even officially with. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if it’s the reason you’re shutting me out.”
“I’m not shutting you out. I’m thinking. I’m allowed to think, Quest. I’m allowed to process my feelings without you showing up at my door demanding an explanation.”
He stood up from the sofa. Slowly. The way he moved when he was about to say something he meant with his whole chest. He walked toward me and I held my ground because I was not about to back up in my own apartment.
“You wanna know what I think?” he said, stopping about a foot away from me.
Close enough that I could smell him. That goddamn cologne that had been living in my dreams rent-free since the parking lot.
“I think you’re scared. I think the other night meant something to you and it freaked you out.
I think your therapist told you something that gave you permission to run and you grabbed it with both hands because running is what you know. ”
“Don’t tell me what I know.”
“I think you’ve been taking care of yourself for so long that you don’t know how to let somebody else do it. And when I try, you fight me. When I show up, you push back. When I give you something good, you look for the catch because every man before me had one.”
“Stop.”
“I’m not them, Mehar.”
“I said stop.”
“I’m not your father. I’m not your exes. And I’m not going anywhere because you didn’t text me back.”
I was shaking. My hands, my jaw, my shoulders, all of me trembling because he was right and I hated that he was right and I hated that this man could see through me.
My eyes were stinging and my chest was tight and I was so angry and so tired of being angry and so tired of being scared of every good thing that tried to get close to me.
“I’m terrified,” I whispered. And I hadn’t meant to say it out loud but there it was, hanging between us like a confession.
“I know you are.” His voice dropped to something low and warm.
“I’m terrified too. You think this is easy for me?
I haven’t let anybody in since—” He stopped.
Clenched his jaw. Started again. “I haven’t let anybody in for a long time.
And you scare the shit out of me because you’re the first person I’ve wanted to try for.
So yeah, I picked your lock. And yeah, I’m standing in your apartment uninvited.
Because you went quiet on me. You’re mine.
And if you disappear on me again, we gon’ have a serious problem. ”
I looked at him and kissed him.
I grabbed his face with both hands and pulled his mouth to mine and kissed him with all the fear and the want and the fury and the confusion I’d been carrying since Janelle’s couch.
He caught me, one hand on my waist, the other on the back of my neck, and he kissed me back with something that felt like relief.
The kiss got deeper and his hands got lower and mine got bolder and somewhere between the living room and the hallway my purse hit the floor and my keys hit the floor and his jacket was off and my top was over my head and he was pressing me against the wall of my hallway with his mouth on my neck and my fingers in his hair.
“I’m still mad at you,” I breathed against his ear.
“Be mad.” He bit down softly on my collarbone and I made a sound that contradicted everything I’d just said. “Be furious. Be whatever you need to be. I’m still not leaving.”
He scooped me up and carried me to the sofa because the bedroom was too far and neither of us had the patience to make it down the hall.
He laid me back against the leather and pulled my leggings off in one motion, underwear with them, and he was on his knees on the floor in front of the couch before I could process the transition from fighting to this.
“Quest, we were in the middle of an argument—”
“And now we’re in the middle of something else.” He spread my thighs apart with both hands and looked at me, his eyes dark and locked on mine. “You can go back to being mad at me after. Right now I need you to lay back and let me apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“For picking your lock.” He pressed his lips against my inner thigh.
“For showing up uninvited.” The other thigh.
“For making you feel like I was trying to control you.” A kiss right above where I needed him, close but not there.
“And for being right about everything I just said, which I know pissed you off the most.”
“You are so—”
His tongue made contact and the sentence died. He licked me slow, one deliberate stroke that started low and dragged upward with just enough pressure to make my hips lift off the cushion. He pressed them back down with one hand flat on my stomach.
“Mmm.” He hummed against me like he was tasting something he’d been thinking about all day. “There she is. My pretty little peach.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Shhh.” Another lick, this one firmer, his tongue flat and wide against my pussy. “This is my peach. And I missed her.” He circled my clit with the tip of his tongue, slow and teasing. “Did you miss me?”
I didn’t answer because answering would mean admitting that I’d thought about his mouth every single night since the last time and I was not giving him that satisfaction.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to say it.” He sucked my clit into his mouth gently and I gripped the armrest so hard the leather creaked. “Your body’s already telling me everything I need to know.”
He was right. My body was a traitor. My thighs were trembling, my back was arching, and I was already wet enough that I could hear the sounds his mouth was making against me, slick and obscene and absolutely devastating.
“You taste even better than last time,” he murmured between strokes.
“I been thinking about this pussy all week, Peach. Couldn’t concentrate in meetings.
Couldn’t sleep. Kept remembering how you sounded when you came for me.
” He slid his tongue inside me and my hand flew to his head.
“Yeah, pull my hair. I like when you do that. Means I’m hitting the right spot. ”
“Quest—”
“That’s it. Say my name just like that.” He went back to my clit and changed the rhythm, faster now, more focused, zeroing in on exactly where I needed him.
“You know what drives me crazy about you? Everything. Your smart mouth. Your attitude. The way you fight me on everything and then melt when I put my mouth on you. You’re so fuckin’ beautiful when you let go, Mehar. You know that?”
I was losing the ability to form words. His tongue was relentless, alternating between long, slow strokes that made my toes curl and tight, fast circles on my clit that made my stomach clench. And he kept talking, kept praising, his voice low and vibrating against my most sensitive skin.
“Good girl. Just like that. You’re doing so good for me. Let me hear you.”
A moan escaped me that I would’ve been embarrassed about in any other context. He groaned in response like my pleasure was feeding his.
“That sound right there. That’s my favorite sound in the whole world.” He gripped my thighs tighter and buried his face deeper and I felt the orgasm building from that same deep place it had come from last time, rising through my center like a tide that was going to pull me under.
“I’m close,” I gasped. “Quest, I’m so close—”
“I know, Peach. I can feel you tightening up. Don’t hold it. Give it to me. I want all of it.” He sucked my clit hard and flicked his tongue against it at the same time and my whole body seized up. “Come for me, beautiful. Let go. I got you. I always got you.”
I came apart. The orgasm crashed through me in waves that made my legs shake and my back bow off the sofa and my hand pull his hair hard enough to make him groan.
He didn’t stop, just slowed down, gentling his tongue through the aftershocks, kissing me softly, easing me back to earth one stroke at a time.
When I could see straight again, he was looking up at me from between my thighs with slick lips and dark eyes and the most satisfied expression I’d ever seen on a man’s face.
“Apology accepted?” he asked.
“I hate you.”
“You keep saying that.” He kissed the inside of my thigh. “But your body keeps disagreeing.”
He stood up and handed me my leggings from the floor like a gentleman who hadn’t just had his face between my legs on my living room sofa.
“Get dressed. I’m taking you to dinner.”
“You think you can just—”
“Mehar.”
“What.”
“Get dressed. Wear something pretty. I’ll be in the car.
” He stepped into the bathroom to freshen up first. Then came back.
He kissed my forehead, grabbed his jacket off the floor, and walked out of my apartment leaving me sitting on my sofa half-naked with shaking legs and the faint understanding that I had lost this argument in the most devastating way possible.
I sat there for a full minute. Then I got up, took a shower, did my makeup, put on a dress, and went downstairs to get in the Maybach. Because apparently that’s what I do now. Fight with Quest Banks and then go to dinner with him like he didn’t just ruin me on my own furniture.
Janelle was wrong. This wasn’t my nervous system seeking regulation. This was something else entirely, something I didn’t have a clinical name for and didn’t want one. Whatever this was, it was mine. And I was done letting anybody, therapist, trauma, or otherwise, talk me out of it.